The latest volume in the Wild Cards series was released on June 21, while I was touring and signing in Poland. You can pick up a copy now from your favorite local bookstore, or order one from your favorite online retailer.

After the wide-ranging global storylines of the Committee triad, FORT FREAK returns to New York City, the epicenter of the Wild Cards universe, to tell the stories of the cops and crooks of the historic 5th precinct of the NYPD — the Jokertown precinct.

The lineup this time around includes stories by Wild Cards veterans Melinda Snodgrass, Stephen Leigh, John Jos. Miller, Kevin Andrew Murphy, and Victor Milan, and introduces newcomers (new to Wild Cards, at least) Cherie Priest, David Anthony Durham, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Ty Franck, and Paul Cornell. You can check out a sample of Cherie's interstitial, the literary mortar that holds all the bricks together, on my website... and read Melinda's story, "The Rook," on Tor.com at http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/06/the-rook

So come meet Ramshead, the Rook, Tabby, SlimJim, Abigail the understudy, Sgt. Squinch, Ratboy and Flipper, Tinkerbill, the Infamous Black Tongue, Natya, Maggie Graves, Puff, Beastie, Dr. Dildo, and the other colorful denizens of Fort Freak and environs. Old-timers like Father Squid, the Sleeper, and the Oddity also turn up to enliven the proceedings.

Also... some more good news for the Wild Cards fans out there. The seventeenth volume in the series, John Jos. Miller's novel DEATH DRAWS FIVE, was released in hardcover just a week before its publisher (iBooks) went bankrupt, and very few copies ever made it to market. As a result, this volume of the series has been near impossible to find, commanding huge prices from dealers on the secondary market.

But at long last Brick Tower Press, who acquired many of the assets of iBooks in the bankruptcy proceedings, has released a paperback edition. It's available on Amazon at

DEATH DRAWS FIVE is a tale of fists, faith, and armageddon in America's heartland, the novel features John's asskicker ace Billy Ray (aka Carnifex), the long-time fan favorite Fortunato and his son John Fortune, and the shape-shifting private dick Mr. Nobody, along with John Nighthawk, the Midnight Angel, and a host of other new characters. In many ways it is the last of the "original series" of Wild Cards, before the introduction of the "next generation" cast featured in INSIDE STRAIGHT and subsequent volumes.

So for all those readers who have been looking to fill the hole in your Wild Cards collection, here's your chance to complete your sets.